Decontamination
Traceability is vital for patient safety
Alex Prior explains why flexible traceability systems are integral to patient safety. In this article, Alex highlights how the Royal United Hospital has driven improvement.
According to a report published by the National Library of Medicine, as many as 42% of patients experience physical deterioration following a cancelled surgical procedure. For hospitals, a cancelled operation means failed clinical pathways, fractured care coordination, and erosion of patient trust in the very institution meant to keep them safe. Across the NHS, over 7 million patients are on the waiting list for surgery,1
delayed not because of clinical
necessity, but by completely preventable operational failures: a missing tray, unavailable equipment, or instruments that should have been serviced before their last reprocessing...
The hidden machinery of patient harm These disruptions are not only logistical challenges, such as lost theatre time or resource wastage, they translate into tangible patient harm which has a cascade of other challenges, like litigation fees, lost trust and reputational damage. The culprit? Traceability, or lack thereof.
Manual, paper-based traceability processes
(which are still in use today), as well as unintegrated, rigid systems create silos. When dealing with contaminants, silos can increase risk.
Let’s consider what happens in a hospital still
operating on paper-based instrument tracking: Example 1. A tray is cleaned. A staff member manually records it on paper. That record sits in one department. Theatre requests the tray - they call and wait for someone to manually verify if that tray is ready. Days pass. No one has visibility into whether that tray was actually sterilised, whether it’s been sitting in storage contaminating other equipment or whether it’s ready for use. An instrument reaches theatre. Was it properly processed? No one can reliably say. Or let’s consider outdated, rigid systems: Example 2: A rigid platform forces staff to contort their processes to fit generic software, not their clinical reality. Theatre has a different system - one that can’t talk to the SSD’s platform. They see outdated information
and call to manually verify what the system should have told them immediately. Days pass. An instrument reaches theatre. The theatre system says it’s processed. The SSD system says something different, or the information never transferred at all. Which is correct? Again, no one can reliably say. That gap between systems is where patient harm hides. Unreliable traceability systems leave healthcare teams exposed to higher rates of hospital-acquired infections, compliance breaches, and worst of all, patients harmed.
Case study: Royal United Hospitals Bath Royal United Hospital Bath Trust Foundation (RUH) faced the same structural vulnerabilities as hundreds of NHS Trusts. Their SSD operated with dedicated staff, but were supported by systems that made patient safety fragile. Soby Joseph, Head of Sterile Services & Trust Decontamination Manager at RUH, described the reality: “We wanted less of a ‘this is the way you should be working’ [from our traceability system] and more of a ‘we flex to suit you’ – which is exactly what FingerPrint offered.” Existing systems were inflexible, forcing the team to adapt clinical processes to suit
software limitations rather than clinical reality. Traceability couldn’t extend beyond basic instrument reprocessing – high-level disinfection and decontamination procedures remained invisible. Training and reporting was paper-based. The result was human error, delays, and no real-time oversight into what was actually happening. With increasingly complex instruments
entering their workflows, like robotics, advanced endoscopy, and minimally invasive surgery equipment, the hospital needed a system that could evolve with them, not dictate how they should work.
RUH made a fundamental decision: implement a system designed around patient safety, not around a software manufacturer’s convenience. They introduced Athera FingerPrint, a flexible, digital traceability platform that integrated with how the department actually worked. Staff gained real-time visibility of every instrument and tray throughout its lifecycle: cleaning, sterilisation, storage, distribution. The team could pre-empt problems before they impacted theatre schedules. Inefficiencies that had previously caused cancellations disappeared: “We haven’t had a surgery cancellation
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